Using Methods in the Field: A Practical Introduction and Casebook
Author(s): Victor C. de Munck (Editor), Elisa J. Sobo (Editor), H. Russell Bernard (Contributor), Gery Ryan (Contributor), Thomas Weisner (Contributor), Mark S. Fleisher (Contributor), Jennifer A. Harrington (Contributor), Juliana Flinn (Contributor), Gun Roos (Contributor), Allen Johnson (Contributor), Robert C. Harman (Contributor), Carole E. Hill (Contributor), W. Penn Handwerker (Contributor), Douglas Caulkins (Contributor), Javier Garcia de Alba Garcia (Contributor), Ana Leticia Salcedo Rocha (Contributor), Guadarrama L. A. Vargas (Contributor), Trini Garro (Contributor), Jeffrey C. Johnson (Contributor), David C. Griffith (Contributor), Lauren Clark (Contributor), Carol P. Vojir (Contributor), Nancy O. Hester (Contributor), Roxie Foster (Contributor), Karen L. Miller (Contributor), Stephen P. Borgatti (Contributor)
Publisher: AltaMira Press
Publication Date: 18 Oct. 1998
Language: English
Print length: 288 pages
ISBN-10: 0761989129
ISBN-13: 9780761989127
Book Description
Methods textbooks generally offer prescriptive advice on how to perform certain techniques, how to develop specific strategies, how to analyze your results. But, as all experienced ethnographers know, this fine-sounding advice rarely provides ample guidance in dealing with real people in real field settings. That is where this casebook differs. Selecting many key methods regularly used by anthropologists ― participant observation, consensus analysis, simple surveys, scaling, freelisting and triads, networks, decision modeling― the editors commissioned scholars who have completed studies using these techniques to describe them in the context of real field work. Using cases from health, community politics, family relations, and child development (among others) in settings as diverse as an Arkansas college campus, a Mexican barrio, a Thai village, and a Scottish business, the student is given a clear understanding of the diversity of methods used by anthropologists and the complexities surrounding their use.
Editorial Reviews
Review
The text is eminently practical… The cultural anthropologists run into a dizzying variety of problems and tackle them with diverse approaches. Those who study the relationship between language and culture equally need a combination of flexibility and tried and true methods of dealing with both people and data.The 20 experts here give the benefit of their hands-on research experience, whether with problems of healthcare providers, or prison populations, Sri Lankan nationalization and modernization conflicts. ― Geolinguistics
About the Author
Victor C. de Munck is an assistant professor of anthropology at SUNY-New Paltz. Elisa J. Sobo is associate professor of anthropology at San Diego State University.
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